Matt Forbeck's Blog, page 24

My Holiday Sale

Since we’re stampeding toward the year’s grand finale,  I want to do something to thank all of you for your support in 2013. In the spirit of the season, I just put the #1 books in each of my three trilogies on sale for 80% off. Until the end of the year—or whenever I recover from New Year’s Eve—you can grab each of them for only 99¢!

To get that price, you can buy them direct from me here, at DriveThruFiction.com, or at Amazon (click on the covers below). Each of these books stands alone and make for a satisfying read on its own, although if you like them, be sure to check out the others in the series too. Thanks!

      

Happy holidays to you all! And here’s to a fantastic 2014!

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Monster Academy 1 Finished!

This week, I put the finishing touches on the first Monster Academy novel, I Will Not Eat People. This is for the last of the four 12 for ’12 Kickstarters I ran, and I’m finally getting around to shoving it out the door. (See the previous two posts for some of the reasons why.) My backers should start getting ebooks this week, and hard copies should arrive in their hands before the end of January if all goes well with the proofs and the printer.

After that, I’ll release the book for the rest of the world to read. I’m planning on that happening in February, and you should be able to get it through all your favorite ebook retailers, with print copies available through DriveThruFiction.com soon after too. To whet your appetite, here’s the wraparound cover.

While I’m at it, I’d like to show off the covers for the next two books in the series. Book two is called I Will Not Burn Down the School. 

And book three is titled I Will Not Destroy the Kingdom. 

These should be out within a few months after I Will Not Eat People. I’ll be working on them between other gigs, which includes a world for the Lords of Gossamer and Shadow RPG, a novel for the Exalted RPG, Loot Drop (the novel I sold to Tor last summer), and a bit more work on a couple iOS games for Ubisoft Shanghai, plus a handful of short stories I owe people.

I do plan to run some new Kickstarters in 2014, but I want to make sure I get these well underway before I start in on any new projects. I owe my backers for both their faith and their patience, and I intend to make good on that debt. The best part, of course, is that I then get to share those books with the rest of the world.

Soon.

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My-My-My-My-My-My Glaucoma

As I’ve mentioned, I was diagnosed with glaucoma back on October 30 of this year. I get a lot of questions about it, so I want to try to answer some of them here. Glaucoma.org is a fine place to dig a little deeper if you’re curious about it.

Glaucoma is a disease of the eye that usually involves an increase of the intraocular pressure. This pressure builds up over time and can damage the optic nerve. It happens slowly enough—and creeps in from the edges of your field of vision—that most people don’t notice it until it’s too late. By that time, you’ve already lost a good chunk of your vision. This is why the disease is called “the silent thief.”

I have what’s called open-angle glaucoma, which is the most common type. In my case, I lost about 40% of the vision in my right eye. Fortunately, this started in the upper left quadrant of that eye, which means the loss overlaps with the vision from my left eye, which is still unaffected. While that made it harder for me to notice it at first, it’s not as troublesome now as it would be if I’d lost the vision in some other part of my eye.

To test me for this, they had me sit with my face in a machine, hold still, and look at a single spot while the machine flashed random lights in a grid around that spot. I had to click a button when I saw the light. This way, they can map out what you can and can’t see. My right eye looks like this:

The dark spots are the places where I can’t see  in that eye. The darker they are, the worse it is.

My son Marty asked me what the color of blindness is. He thought it would be black, but it’s nothing like that really. I don’t see black spots in those places. The nerve has been damaged and can’t see anything there at all. There’s no there there.

In terms of a color that doesn’t exist, it looks like the spots you see right after you look into the sun. But nothing brings it back, no matter how much you blink.

There’s no cure for glaucoma, and there’s no way to regain the lost vision. It’s treatable though, and the treatment usually arrests the disease in its tracks. In my case, I have to use medicated eyedrops three times a day. These don’t come cheap, but fortunately I have decent health insurance though my wife’s job as a school social worker.

With luck, there should be no further loss of vision. There’s still a chance of it, though, as the increase of pressure in the eye isn’t the only aspect of glaucoma, and that’s primarily what the eyedrops treat.

While it’s hard to tell what causes glaucoma, the doctors suspect mine is the result of decades of treating asthma with steroids. It seems that both of my grandfathers my dad’s father suffered from it too, which didn’t help matters. When it comes down to the choice between breathing and seeing, though, I have to go with continuing to breathe. I’m partial that way.

Fortunately, the treatment seems to be working well for me. My optometrist consistently tested me for this every year—it’s that puff of air they blow into your eye—and it had been climbing, but it spiked up to 32mm this summer for some reason. (Above 22 or so is when you should start watching carefully.) With the eyedrops, the pressure in my left eye has dropped down to 11, and my right eye is holding steady without any treatment at all.

So, if you see me ducking out of a convention hall in the middle of the day—or walking around with one eye closed for a bit—now you’ll know why. And it might influence my choice of Halloween costumes in the future, although I’d have a hard time deciding between going as a pirate or Nick Fury.

Sure, it’s a hassle to have to deal with it, but the threat of losing more of my sight helps remind me every time I need to use the drops. I asked my doctor when I could stop being paranoid about my eyesight. He said, “From here on out, you’ll always be paranoid about your eyesight.”

Fair enough.

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Rest in Peace, Pat Kolinsky

Just yesterday, I finally sent out the files for Monster Academy: I Will Not Eat People, the first book in the trilogy. I’m running late on the series, of course, but my backers have been kind and patient about it. A good chunk of the delays came down to me having an overwhelming amount of work on my plate this year, including the new edition of the Marvel Encyclopedia coming out from DK on St. Patrick’s Day of 2014, as well as a pair of trips to Shanghai to work on a couple of iOS games for Ubisoft.

Some more personal issues cropped up. Notably I was diagnosed with glaucoma, and my father-in-law died. I haven’t written about these yet because I’ve been too busy dealing with the fallout, but now it’s time.

Let me take those in order of greatest importance.

Pat Kolinsky was a wonderful man. He spent his working years as an educator, both as a classroom teacher and as the placement director for most of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Lots of students up that way owe their livelihoods—or at least their first steps into them—to Mr. K, as they called him.

After he retired, he and his wife Mar became snowbirds, traveling between homes in Salome, Arizona, and Land o’ Lakes, Wisconsin, which put him within spitting distance of the town where he grew up: Watersmeet, Michigan, home of the Nimrods. (Honestly, that’s their school mascot. ESPN did commercials about it, which spurred a six-episode documentary called Nimrod Nation.)

I owe him and Mar for the incredible job they did raising their daughter Ann, to whom I’ve been married for over 21 years. She’s the love of my life and the mother of our five children, including a 15-year-old son and a set of 11-year-old quadruplets. With Mar’s help, Pat instilled a love of nature, education, and people into Ann and her brother Nick that shines through not only in them but our kids.

I could write a book about Pat and all the things he’s done for me. He loved to hunt and fish and tell stories and play games, and he welcomed me into his family without showing any hesitation. I remember the first time I talked with him, when I had to call and ask him to run out from Ironwood, Michigan, to the family cabin near Watersmeet so he could tell Ann (who was waiting there without a phone or electricity) that I’d walked away from totaling a car on the way up to see her. I also remember the last, when I thanked him and Mar for spending an extra week with Ann and the kids on their way south this October so I could head back to China again.

He died just a couple weeks later, on November 3, 2013. He had a heart attack while watching football on his TV down in Arizona, cheering on his brother-in-law’s Kansas City Chiefs.

He never wanted to wind up in a rest home as he got older, so at least he avoided that particular fate. And he left us while doing something he enjoyed. We should all be so lucky.

Still, he’s gone too soon, and he leaves a massive hole in our lives, so big we still can’t see the edges of it. But we’ll refill it with memories of our time with him and our love for him, which would be enough to overflow the Grand Canyon.

Those of you who knew him should stop by the Pat Kolinsky Memorial page we set up on Facebook. If you have memories of your own of him—photos, stories, whatever—please share them there.

Here’s one of my favorites.

One time, before Ann and I were married, Pat offered to take me waterskiing on Lake Marion, on the shore of which sat the family cabin. He was worried that his boat’s engine wasn’t quite powerful enough to yank my beefy body hard enough to lift me out of the water, but if I was game, he was willing to give it a try.

He hauled me all around the entire lake three times and through countless attempts to pop me out of the water, some of which dragged me under the boat’s wake for several yards. No matter how much of the lake wound up plowed up my nose, though, I refused to give in as long for as long as I could. With Pat’s encouragement, I kept getting back into position and trying again and again and again.

Despite my determination, I never did get out of that water. When my arms finally gave out from exhaustion, Pat helped me back on board the boat, and we returned to shore. When he reached for the boat’s anchor to throw it overboard, he looked down and saw that he’d been dragging it along behind us the entire time.

I’m sure it was an accident. Honest. Or maybe a subconscious way to test out a future son-in-law’s sense of humor.

Either way, we had one hell of a laugh over that. I’ll miss that about him most.

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Crossover Day!

As you may recall from last year, my pals at Zombie Orpheus ran a huge Kickstarter for their fantastic film The Gamers: Hands of Fate, which is mostly set at Gen Con, my favorite event of the year. As part of that, they asked me if I’d be interested setting up a crossover between the movie and my then-upcoming Gen Con thriller, Dangerous Games: How to Play. 

Right after I was through doing my happy dance, I said yes.

Since then, the film has been released to backers and has racked up the rave reviews. The Zombie Orpheus folks have also started to release the extended edition for free on YouTube, one bit at a time. Today, they released the episode in which Leo Lamb walks out of the film and into Dangerous Games: How to Play.

Better yet, Scott C. Brown, the actor who plays Leo, reads aloud the piece in which Leo appears in the book—and makes a horrifying discovery.

How cool is that? Better yet, you can watch the whole film online for only $10. And! You can still grab Dangerous Games: How to Play for only 99¢ for the Kindle. For now.

Many thanks to Scott Brown, Ben Dobyns, Matt Vancil, and the rest of the crew at Zombie Orpheus for making this happen.

Go, watch, listen, read, enjoy.

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November Appearances

I have three appearances scheduled for next month, one in South Dakota, one in Milwaukee, and one right here in Beloit.

First up, I’ll be at Nanocon at Dakota State University from November 8–10, along with luminaries like Richard Dansky, Geoffrey Long, and Ken Rolston. In particular, I have a keynote speech at 10 AM on November 9 about how intriguing choices are the common glue that makes both great games and stories stick together.

The following Tuesday, November 12, at 6:30 PM, I’m speaking at Mount Mary University with Patrick Tomlinson about world and language building. This is free and open to the public, so join us if you can.

The Thursday after that, November 14, I’ve been asked to join a local author fair at the Beloit Public Library, the place that taught me more about the love of reading than anywhere outside my home. That runs from 4–6 PM and, again, it’s free and open to the public.

Hope to see you out there!

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Two Kickstarters for You

You can tell I’m busy when I don’t get around to updating the blog for, um— Wow, has it been five weeks?

It was a crazy five weeks. We started our eldest at high school and the quads at middle school. I spent a week in China working on a couple upcoming iOS games for Ubisoft Shanghai. And just last night I sent off the last chunk of the new edition of the Marvel Encyclopedia, which is due out in March of 2014—or tomorrow, in publishing terms.

Meanwhile, other things keep happening. Case in point, I’m involved in two Kickstarters at the moment. The first is Cthulhu Haiku II and More Mythos Madness, an anthology from my fellow Alliterate and longtime pal Lester Smith. This is becoming an annual tradition with Les, and the first book was a hoot. I’m honored to be chipping in a short tale for this one. It’s already funded—the goal was $13, after all—so you’re guaranteed to get a book if you join in. As I write this, you only have about 48 hours to join in.

I’m also involved in Help Fund My Robot Army and Other Improbable Kickstarters, edited by anthology superstar John Joseph Adams. As you might guess from the title, this is an anthology of stories told in the form of Kickstarter drives, being funded on Kickstarter. It’s so meta, I couldn’t resist it. I suggest you don’t even try.

My tale will be about time travel, which is going to make for a bit of a twisted Kickstarter page. You’ll see. This one’s already funded too, and we have around 68 hours to go, so don’t wait long. Go back it.

Now that I’m done with the Marvel book, it’s back to finishing the Monster Academy books for me, plus knocking out a few short stories I’ve promised people for other things. Then it’s on to Loot Drop (the original novel I sold to Tor earlier this year), and after that I’ll tackle the Exalted novel for my pals over at the Onyx Path.

So, the year doesn’t promise to get any less crazy, but it’s guaranteed to be fun. Thanks for reading!

 

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It’s a Dangerous Games Fiasco

As part of the Kickstarter I ran for my Dangerous Games novels, I promised to create a playset for Fiasco based on the novels. For those who don’t know, Fiasco is a fantastic tabletop roleplaying game created by Jason Morningstar, which won the Diana Jones Award a few years back. It’s a fantastic game, although very different from your standard “kick down the door, kill the monsters, take their loot” RPG, mostly because instead of trying to beat the bad guys, you spend the game trying to make the story as interesting as possible. Which usually involves making things harder on the characters by consensus.

It’s great. Trust me.

I wrote the playset up in early August and then played it at Gen Con, the largest tabletop games convention in this hemisphere. As always, I had a great time at Gen Con, talking to people about games, although it was a little eerie spotting out all the places where horrible things happen in the Dangerous Games novels, especially when wandering past them in the middle of the night. (All three of the books are out and available for the public now, so be sure to tell your pals.) While I was there, I had a chance to playtest the Dangerous Games playset for Fiasco with an all-star crew.

Keith Baker (creator of Eberron and Gloom) and his wife Jenn hosted the game session in their suite. Jason Morningstar — the designer of Fiasco himself — joined us and bore with me as I confessed that while I loved the game I’d not actually played it until that day. He taught me everything with a smile and coached us all along with fantastic class. Wil Wheaton and Peter Adkison had been slated to join us, but they had to pull out due to scheduling conflicts. The fantastic Kristin Firth stepped in to fill their shoes.

We had as amazing a time as you can pack into a game in two short hours. I incorporated their suggestions into the text, gave it a quick polish with the feedback from the other playtesters, and finished it up. Jason posted the results over at the Bully Pulpit Games site earlier this week. You can go grab it now for free. 

I hope you enjoy it and have just as much fun as we did playing ordinary gamers with powerful ambitions and poor impulse control. To celebrate the playset’s release, I’m keeping Dangerous Games: How to Play on sale for just 99¢ until Monday. Be sure to get it fast.

Thanks for all your support!

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My Southeast Wisconsin Festival of Books Schedule

This weekend, I’ll be zipping up to Waukesha to take part in the Southeast Wisconsin Festival of Books for the first time. I’ve heard lots of great things about it over the years, and this time around the ever-kind John Klima (of Electric Velocipede fame) invited me to take part in the Science Fiction Writers of America‘s slate of programming. I should be there on Friday night for the keynote, and I’ll be around most of Saturday as well. My official schedule is as follows:

September 21

9:30 AM: Graphic Novels Panel, with Mike Norton and Bill Willingham. (Room N130)
10:45 AM: Science Fiction Gaming, with Gary Kloster and Bob Love (Room N130)
1:30 PM: Glitter and Mayhem/Crowdfunding, with John Klima, Lynne M.Thomas, and Michael D.Thomas (Room N130)
3 PM: Signing (Commons Student Lounge)

If you’re in the area, come on out and say hi and join in the fun.

 

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Battle Isle: Threshold Run Kickstarter Launched

As you might recall, I’ve been writing an online comic for an upcoming video game from Stratotainment called Battle Isle: Threshold Run. (Start here and take a quick read. We have four episodes up so far with more on the way soon.)

Yesterday, Stratotainment launched a Kickstarter for the game. It’s a turn-based strategy game that fans of the strategy genre, board gamers, and war gamers should all enjoy. The drive is for the iOS version of the game, and from the development bits I’ve seen, it’s looking great.

The pitch video for the Kickstarter is hilarious. Watch it for that. And for the shout-out Thomas Hertzler gives me at 2:42.

Battle Isle: Threshold Run takes place in 1946 Germany, soon after the end of WWII. An alien invasion forces the people of Earth to band together against this common foe, even as the wounds from their last conflict are still healing.

The Kickstarter has a slew of great rewards, ranging from a copy of the game all the way up to getting your likeness into the game as a commander. You can even get limited edition models of some of the tanks in the game, sculpted by my old pal Tim Prow.

Anyhow, check out the video, take a look at the drive, and pledge what you can. And please spread the word. Thanks!

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